2.6.00 enhancements

This section contains information about the enhancements and new features in version 2.6.00 of the products that compose BMC TrueSight App Visibility Manager.

Consolidated documentation for BMC TrueSight App Visibility Manager products

Documentation for the following BMC TrueSight App Visibility Manager products has been consolidated in this space:

• BMC Real End User Experience Monitoring and Analytics 2.6
• BMC Application Diagnostics 2.6
• BMC Application Management Console 2.6
• BMC TrueSight End User Monitor 4200 Series 6.6
• BMC Real End User Experience Hardware Collector 4200 Series 6.6
• BMC Synthetic Transaction Execution Adapter 2.6, which is part of Borland Silk Performer Synthetic Transaction Monitoring for BMC Software 15.5

Enhancements to the Application View 

The Application View provides the following improvements to help you identify and resolve problems with your applications:

• Detailed page performance reports about the User tier
• Detailed performance reports for the Database tier
• Faster controls for viewing problems
• Customizable application thresholds
• Configuration no longer requires Watchpoints

Detailed page performance reports about the User tier

If you set thresholds for page end-to-end time, the User tier now provides a visual indication of the performance of user pages. 

For more information, see Analyzing web page problems with the User tier.

Detailed performance reports for the Database tier

The Database tier now provides a visual indication about the database performance and availability compared to the set thresholds.

For more information, see Analyzing database problems with the Database tier.

Faster controls for viewing problems

In an earlier versions of the Application View, you viewed problems by moving the slider.Now you can also move to the next or previous problem by clicking the forward or back arrow buttons. The color of the arrow indicates the severity of the next problem. In the following example, the next problem has a severity of Critical.

Customizable application thresholds

In earlier versions of the product, the Application View provided application states based on the Application Diagnostics Agent Policy. You can now set the critical and warning thresholds for selected applications.

For more information, see Configuring applications.

Configuration no longer requires Watchpoints

Earlier versions of the Application View required that you install the Application Diagnostics Agent and set up Watchpoints. Watchpoint configuration is no longer required.

Ability to view user transactions

A new User Transactions page enables you to list and view the user transactions that contributed to performance and availability problems in the application. For details, see Viewing user transaction details.

Improvements to Real User Cloud probe

The Real User Cloud probe provides the following improvements:

• Cloud Probe logs files are now rotated automatically every 14 days. For details, see Cloud Probe log files.
• The list of the operating systems supported by Cloud Probe has been expanded. For details, see System requirements for the Cloud Probe.
• The custom field extraction feature, used to extract a subset of traffic to be examined, has been added. For details, see Defining a custom field extraction domain.

New Application Performance Monitoring Central component

The new Application Performance Monitoring Central (APM Central) component combines the BMC Application Management Console, Performance Analytics Engine (PAE), and Real User Monitor into a single virtual image that you can install on one VM. This all-in-one application monitoring component reduces your deployment time and total cost of ownership of the product. 

Support for IPv6 in BMC Real End User Experience Monitoring

BMC Real End User Experience Monitoring version 2.6 supports Internet Protocol, version 6, for identification and communication with the system components: Analyzer, Collector, Monitor, APM Console, Cloud Probe, and PAE.

The following topics provide additional detail about changes to support IPv6:

• Changes to SNMP configuration and support for IPv6
• Mapping IP addresses to the cryptographic keys
• Logging on to the user and command-line interfaces
• How traffic inclusion and exclusion policies work
• Enabling remote logging (syslog) for end-user experience monitoring core components
• Adding or removing a component from the APM Console
• Setting the system time manually or through NTP
• Uploading multiple key files simultaneously
• Verifying the BMC Real End User Monitoring and APM Console installation

Changes to SNMP configuration and support for IPv6

You can send SNMP traps to a trap manager (receiver) that supports the IPv4 or IPv6 protocol (or both). Your SNMP configuration will be migrated and set to the default IPv4 protocol.

Configuration of the trap manager (receiver) has been updated in the following topics:

• snmpconfig command - Used for configuration of the trap manager (receiver) for the APM Console or Performance Analytics Engine (PAE)
• Configuring SNMP traps - Used for configuration of the trap manager (receiver) for Real User Analyzer, Real User Collector, or Real User Monitor

Changes to the Network Management (SNMP) interface

In addition to IPv6 support, the following changes were made to SNMP configuration:

• AES was enabled as a privacy protocol for SNMP traps.
• The SNMP agent supports enabling both SNMPv2c and SNMPv3 access at the same time. The same support was also added to the snmpconfig command.
• You can configure and enable two trap targets at the same time: one for IPv4 and one for IPv6.

For full details, see Configuring the local SNMP agent and Configuring SNMP traps.

Changes to the snmpconfig command

The following changes were made to the snmpconfig command:

• The -v and -V parameters were removed. (You now specify the version of the SNMP agent with the -e parameter, and you specify the version of the trap manager with the -E parameter.)
• The -N parameter was added for specifying the IP protocol of the trap manager.
• The -W parameter was added for removing the trap manager address. (The -W parameter is used with the -N parameter.)
• The -I parameter will display the default engine ID value for an end-user experience component.

Enhancements to Extended Reporting

Extended Reporting includes the following improvements:

• Two new reports were added to the list of reports that you can run with BMC Real End User Experience Monitoring Extended Reporting: Application Analysis by Server and Application Change Impact Analysis.
• New objects were added to the SAP BusinessObjects BI launch pad (measures to track HTTP codes and request types).

• Extended Reporting data for BMC Real End User Experience Monitoring can be stored in the same Oracle instance as BMC ProactiveNet Performance Management when Oracle enterprise is used.

• You can upgrade the Aggregation Server upgrade through the admin UI.

• Extended Reporting provides better support for minute-level aggregation.

Improvements to Session Overview and integration with BMC Synthetic End User Experience Monitoring plug-in

To improve session analysis, the following enhancements were introduced in Session Overview:

• Session Overview is now integrated with the BMC Synthetic End User Experience Monitoring plug-in. This integration means that in addition to real traffic, now you can analyze synthetic transactions as well. You select the type of traffic for analysis when you run a Performance Analysis query.
• Now you can save the analysis settings for later use. This feature is useful, for example, if you want to examine the troublesome areas in the application again after the issue was solved.
• When you analyze a single session, you can get a quick view of the pages with certain issues only, for example, slow pages or pages with errors. For more details, see Using the Session Overview page to analyze a session.

Improvements in Global Application Delivery dashlet

The following improvements were introduced to the Global Application Delivery dashlet:

• Improvements were introduced for the mobile support of the Global Application Delivery dashlet. Now working with a dashlet on a tablet is more convenient.
• Synchronization with the server was improved for better data display on the dashlet.
• Grid View for the dashlet was improved for better data display. Also, the filter for the Grid View now shows only the necessary zones – those areas that are presented in the grid.
• Ticker filter was improved.
• Global Application Delivery dashlet now shows data in the time zone configured on the APM Console. Other dashlets show data in the time zone of the Real User Analyzer.

To see the previous version of the dashlet, use Internet Explorer version 8.

Ability to see the status of data storage for the Performance Analytics Engine component

You can view the status (Preparing, Formatting, or Mounting) of data storage when you select Local disk as the data storage location for the Performance Analytics Engine. For more details, see Assigning a data storage location.

Enhancements to synthetic transaction monitoring

The following improvements were introduced to BMC Synthetic End User Experience Monitoring:

• To support applications and technologies that require processes, such as for browser-driven scripts, BMC Synthetic Transaction Execution Adapter (TEA) Agent can run as a process.
• For a deeper examination into specific transaction results you can request and download execution logs for synthetic transactions from the Performance Analysis pages in the BMC Application Management Console.
• For better transaction filtering, the following changes were made to the Synthetic Device Configuration Pack:
  
  • Removed the Watchpoint configured for "All synthetic transactions with errors" and added the Watchpoint configured for "All synthetic transactions excluding timers"
  • Added synthetic filters to the Watchpoint filter library
  • Removed object-type detection rules. The system now defines synthetic objects as document types, by default.
  • Added object custom fields to capture the object data that you can use in Watchpoints and other system entities
  • Default confidentiality policy now displays the parameters for synthetic transactions
  For information about implementing the configuration pack, see Implementing Synthetic Device Configuration. For information about the contents of the configuration pack, see Recommended configuration for synthetic monitoring.
• To take advantage of recent Silk Performer features, synthetic transaction monitoring supports Borland Silk Performer Synthetic Transaction Monitoring for BMC Software Version 15.5 .
• To run GUI-level scripts, the TEA Agent can now run Silk Test projects. For more information, see Preparing Silk Test script execution for synthetic transaction monitoring.

Increased number of dashlets allowed on an Analyzer dashboard

You can now create Analyzer dashboards that contain as many as 20 dashlets. In earlier releases, each user could create dashboards that contained a maximum of 10 dashlets. 

Restrictions added for configuring data feeds between an Analyzer and Collector

Only users logged on with the Administrator or Security role can configure the traffic data feeds between an Analyzer and a Collector. In earlier versions of the product, users logged on with the Operator role could configure data feeds. 

New user interface for configuring SLA rules

You can now configure service level agreement (SLA) rules for business transactions and for application server performance in a new interface in the BMC Application Management Console. Previously, you could configure threshold values only through agent configuration files, which were harder to see and more prone to errors.

Improvements to troubleshooting documentation

The following troubleshooting topics have been contributed by Customer Support.

• Troubleshooting traffic capture on a Cloud Probe
• Validating and troubleshooting traffic capture on a Collector
• Validating traffic capture on a Collector
• Platform alarm reference
• End-user experience monitoring platform alarms
• alarm command